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Can Astroberry Server run 3 instances of Ekos?

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I have a triple imaging rig currently using 3 separate RPi boards.  The imaging cameras are an ASI 294MMPro connected to an RPi 4B running Astroberry Server and two ASI 1600MM-Cool cameras on separate RPi 3B boards and the earlier <strong>indiserver</strong>.  The RPi 4B also runs the mount and a guide camera.  This system  is accessed using 3 instances of Terminal with SSH and 3 instances of KStars/Ekos running on my tower system with Linux Mint indoors.

I would like to reduce the remote electronics and wondered if I could run 3 instances of Ekos in Astroberry Server.  IOW use one RPi 4 only and get rid of the RPi 3Bs.  The original reason for using separate RPi boards was that Ekos was unable to distinguish between the two ASI 1600MM cameras - they come up with the same ID.  I now wonder if separate instances of Ekos could access different USB ports and avoid the ID contention.

Any information and suggestions gratefully received.
Last edit: 2 years 4 months ago by Gina Davis.
2 years 4 months ago #77187

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You would have to do a lot of the stuff manually, rather than using the INDI web interface, that is - you would probably need to start different INDI servers on different TCP ports and then connect different instances of Ekos (perhaps running under different users) to the individual INDI server ports. It would take some planning, but you could get it running.

Where I think you will hit a gotcha, is when you start to download exposures from the multiple cameras, there has long been issues with the available resources when using the bigger cameras e.g. ASI2600 or ASI6200, by having many cameras you are likely to approach those - e.g.  USB3 bandwidth & Pi memory constraints, which you are currently avoiding by spreading the load across multiple Pis.

If I were to consider moving everything to a single system, I would probably try to move to a high-spec NUC, and perhaps look for one that had more than 1 USB3 bus on the motherboard, or perhaps a system with a PCIe slot, where I could add an extra USB3 controller (e.g. www.scan.co.uk/products/4-port-highpoint...-port-plus-uas-boost ). I would probably roll my own system with Ubuntu on that as well, as when you're doing something as custom as that with the system, it is sometimes better to be in full control of the configuration, rather than rely on how someone else has rolled it for a simpler task.

Hope that helps.
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Last edit: 2 years 4 months ago by Giles.
2 years 4 months ago #77204

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Had this from a friend :-
Last edit: 2 years 4 months ago by Gina Davis.
2 years 4 months ago #77381

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Had this from a friend :- 
"Hi Gina, came across this just now. Looks like there might be a way to run multiple servers on a Pi using different port numbers.
"

Wondered if this could be done with Astroberry Server.  Though maybe the reduced software approach would be better.  Seems to me that running 3 instances of Astroberry Server on one RPi 4B could be pushing it.

Just ordered an RPi 4B with 8GB RAM for testing.  I know I can run Raspbian OS Lite and install 3 instances of indiserver and drivers.  That would be a lighter load than trying to install 3 instances of Astroberry Server.  I don't need all the apps included in Astroberry Server.  The big advantage of Astroberry Server is the ease of installation and setup.  I'm happy enough with a piecemeal installation - done it lots of times.
2 years 4 months ago #77382

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